Why the final Furlong was just too much
Saturday May 11 2002
Andrew Furlong is an unlikely radical. A quietly spoken man, he constructs his sentences slowly and methodically. He is obviously a deep thinker and even his sternest critics acknowledge that his views are sincerely held.
It is the day after he made the painful decision to resign as Dean of Clonmacnoise and Rector of the parishes of Trim and Athboy. Behind him in the rectory study are shelves of heavyweight books on theology with provocative titles like Why Christianity Must Change Or Die. To his left is his computer, from which he publishes his own comprehensive website which con tains all of his controversial articles. For the foreseeable future, that website is likely to be his only pulpit.
He looks tired and exudes an air of deep sadness that it should have come to this. What he describes as his own journey of faith has brought him to the edge of the unknown. Within the next two months or so, he will vacate the rectory, which is directly across the road from St Patrick's Cathedral in Trim.
The rectory has been his home for the past five years. When he leaves, Rev Furlong doesn't know where he will go or what his next job will be.
He remains a clergyman, but his unorthodox views on Christianity mean he is virtually unemployable in any position which involves leading the faithful in worship. It may be he will have to go abroad if he wishes to find meaningful work in the religious life.
Yesterday, the former Irish under-23 hockey international would, in his own words, have been "one of the gladiators" in an unlikely spectacle with deeply unpleasant mediaeval connotations a heresy trial.
He would have had to explain to seven judges why he believes Jesus was not a divine being. Harder still, he would have had to convince them why, holding such views, he should have been allowed to continue being a Church of Ireland clergyman. It was a battle he was not expected to win.
His prosecutor was the unlikely figure of Richard Clarke, Bishop of Meath and Kildare, who is generally regarded as a liberal and the last person in the church to go nailing heretics. The events which nearly led these two men to a theological jousting match in public are unusual to say the least. They began with two unrelated events late last year.
An article appeared in the Irish Catholic referring to Rev Furlong's radical views on Christianity. It is highly unlikely that his Church of Ireland parishioners would have read it, but he mentioned it to them anyway from the pulpit.
At around the same time, a friend of Bishop Clarke in the North rang up with a curious piece of news. Had the bishop noticed what was being pub lished on the Trim and Athboy parish website? The site was primarily used for parish news, with plenty of happy pho tographs of weddings and baptisms and tributes to parishioners who had died. The bishop himself had previously given it a cursory glance and didn't notice anything unusual. Few people in the parish would have even seen the web site, let alone taken the time to download the Dean's personal articles on faith.
The articles in question were lengthy and cogently argued pieces which promoted the view that Jesus, though an outstanding and spiritually great person of his time, was not a supernatural being. He was not God, and not a saviour. The bishop, for all his well-known liberal views, felt that he had to act. After talking to the Dean, he suspended him from all parochial duties.
The resultant controversy had the unlikely effect of introducing theological debate into the mainstream national media. To the outsider, this might look like angels on the head of a pin territory. But to the people directly involved, it involves deadly serious areas of dis agreement and contention.
The slightly odd thing is that Rev Furlong and Bishop Clarke have much in common. Both believe that a vibrant religious faith requires much challenging questioning, reinterpretation and even doubt. Where they differ is on the question of where one should draw the line. Bishop Clarke believes that the divinity of Jesus is a non-negotiable core issue for a Christian clergyman. Rev Furlong is passionate in his belief that the essence of Christ himself should also be a subject for debate, probing and doubt. In fact, he believes this is essential if Christianity is to sur vive into the 21st century with any meaning and relevance.
"The bishop works within particular goalposts," says the former Dean, simplifying the argument, "and I question the position of those goalposts."
The type of language found in the scriptures is from another age when people had a vastly different view of the world, he says. It is neither reasonable nor desirable that we should continue to stick unquestioningly to that terminology and all that comes with it.
"The first thing to grasp about theological language is that it is a metaphorical language and it is also a faith language. When we talk about God, we talk about an infinite invisible being and we have to use concepts from our known human world. So we use meta phors such as father or king or shepherd. We don't literally mean that God is a shepherd.
"When we say that Jesus was a saviour, mediator or god, these again are metaphors. How do we explain them in ordinary language? What I am saying is that the traditional way of understanding Jesus as a human person and a divine person wrapped up in one individual doesn't make sense to us in the 21st century."
Rev Furlong says there are two Jesuses. There is the Jesus of history who is open to investigation by histori ans. In truth, very little is known about him. There is also the Jesus of faith. "It's a historical statement to say that Jesus was a Jew from Nazareth. It's a faith statement to say that he's the saviour of the world."
He continues, holding up his hand: "It's only a partial analogy. Supposing my hand represents the Jesus of history. The Christ of faith is the glove which has been put on it. So now we have this gloved hand which is this individual who is claimed to be both human and divine at the same time."
About half of what Jesus is recorded as saying is likely to be authentic, he believes. "The gospels were written between about 35 and 65 years after the death of Jesus. But as his story was told, he began to be presented as a divinity and as the saviour of the world, in what we call the Christ of faith stories."
He argues that Christianity was born into a world of interventionist gods.
"People believed that God or gods caused famine, disease, earthquakes, natural disasters. It was also a world of animal sacrifices and this influenced the way Jesus's death was interpreted as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
"Today we don't say that God has caused or sent an earthquake or disease. The Holocaust is a reminder that God is not an interventionist god in the sense that he was once believed to be."
Rev Furlong believes in God. The his torical Jesus was a loving and compas sionate human being who taught about an infinitely loving, forgiving and reconciling God. Is he a Christian? "Yes, in the sense that I see myself as part of an evolving religious tradition."
A widely held local view is that Rev Furlong is a highly intelligent, kind and well-meaning man who is entitled to his views. But he was in the wrong job and probably the wrong church. There is considerable local anger at the perception that he grossly deceived his parishioners.
Many in the small and tightly-knitted Church of Ireland community, espe cially the older ones, were thoroughly shocked by what they saw as sheer hypocrisy. How could he preach sermons and officiate at baptisms and funerals, reciting words which he did not believe?
He angered many locals intensely by suggesting that, as lay people, they didn't understand the nuances of theological discourse. "They know exactly what they believe," thunders a diocesan source. "They regarded that as an attack on their faith and their integrity and their whole parish, of which they are justifiably proud."
Parishioners believe that when being interviewed for the position he should have mentioned his beliefs. He admits he did not do that. His formal installation ceremony involved publicly proclaiming his belief in the tenets of the church. Rev Furlong says the bishop would already have been well aware of his radical views. Bishop Clarke has strongly disputed this. The Reverend says he published similar views in the late 1970s as part of a dialogue between two fictitious church members a liberal and a conservative. But he admits that the first time he published these views explicitly in his own name was on the parish website. The site has since been shut down.
Simon Walford, a farmer in his 50s and a prominent parishioner, says the vast majority of parishioners are greatly relieved that he had finally done what he should have done last December resigned. He believes the Dean thrived in the media spotlight.
"We are a quiet, reasonably conservative, middle of the road parish and we don't like a lot of publicity. We take a lot of pride in our cathedral and try and keep it nice, neat and tidy, inside and out."
He believes the episode has had a good effect in that it has made people realise the importance of their faith. "I think basically, he is a very, very clever man and probably thought too deeply. When you start thinking of things too deeply, you start to come up with funny ideas and I think he's done that with religion."
Bishop Clarke says he is certainly not suggesting that boundaries be placed on questioning and inquiry. But if a per son's intellectual journey takes them to a particular place, they should accept the logic of that.
He says Rev Furlong's views are simi lar to those of the Unitarian Church which believes Jesus was a good man and an example to all, but he was not God. If the matter had gone to trial, Rev Furlong intended quoting in his defence from a book And Is It True?, written by none other than Bishop Clarke.
Since being suspended, Rev Furlong has not presided over any religious ceremonies at the cathedral. He has attended two funerals as a member of the congregation. In deference to the feelings of his parishioners, he has chosen not to worship there. He is a regular visitor to early Mass at the Catholic church in Trim, and has been during his five years in Trim. He says his own prayers during the Mass. He believes in crossing bridges and likes the idea of praying in the company of a worship ping community.
Andrew Furlong is a complex and unusual man who takes his theological studies very seriously. Faced with a wholly uncertain future, he is paying a high personal price for his challenging and unorthodox views.
- Willie Dillon
